It is common to equip rail vehicles with toilet units, each such unit comprising a cubicle provided with equipment such as a toilet pan or a handbasin. Such toilet units are usually connected to tanks for clean water and for waste water retention disposed under the frame of the vehicle. Such a configuration with tanks separate and remote from the toilet unit suffers from the drawbacks of complicating installation of the toilet unit by requiring numerous connections, and also of requiring space on the vehicle underframe for the tanks.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,101,766 discloses a toilet unit incorporating a waste water retention tank in one of its side walls, and having a ceiling supporting a clean water tank. Such a toilet unit offers the advantage of having tanks that do not occupy space on the vehicle underframe, but it suffers from the drawback of requiring walls whose structure is sufficiently rigid to be capable of supporting the clean water tank which, because of its situation, is of small capacity and therefore connected to a water feed circuit of the train, making it complicated to install. Such a toilet unit also suffers from the drawback of having a cubicle whose headroom is limited by the size of the clean water tank. Finally, the configuration of such a toilet unit is such that, for a given limiting volume for the toilet unit, the waste water retention tank installed in one of the walls reduces the usable width of the cubicle accordingly.
Thus, an object of the present invention is to remedy these drawbacks by proposing a toilet unit of optimized configuration that incorporates all of the equipment necessary for it to operate, without significantly reducing the ergonomically usable space inside the cubicle.
To this end, the invention provides a toilet unit for a vehicle, in particular a rail vehicle, the toilet unit comprising a cubicle equipped at least with a toilet pan or with a handbasin, said toilet unit defining a limiting volume that is in the shape of a rectangular block, and that is suitable for fitting into a space provided in the rail vehicle for this purpose, said toilet unit incorporating, inside said limiting volume, at least a clean water tank and a waste water retention tank that are necessary to enable said toilet unit to operate, wherein said clean water tank and said waste water retention tank are disposed vertically in respective corners of the rectangular limiting volume, each tank having an outside wall that is wedge shaped to match the shape of the corner of the rectangular limiting volume, and an inside wall on its side that faces into the cubicle that substantially matches the shape of said cubicle.
In particular embodiments of the invention, the toilet unit of the invention may have one or more of the following characteristics taken in isolation or in any technically feasible combination:
the inside wall of each tank has a rounded shape;
the inside wall of each tank is circularly arcuate in shape;
the inside wall of each the tank matches the shape of a partition defining the cubicle;
the inside wall of each tank locally constitutes a partition defining the cubicle;
each of the tanks, namely the clean water tank and the waste water tank, extends over substantially the entire height of the limiting volume of the toilet unit.